


Tanya Sato

by AvatarWillow



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, BAMF Tony Stark, Marvel Universe, Multi, Post-Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Tony Stark-centric, genderbender
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25080772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvatarWillow/pseuds/AvatarWillow
Summary: What if I set the Ironman movie in the universe of Avatar? Follow the story of Tanya Sato after she inherits the reins of Future Industries from her mother. The story blends characters from the Legend of Korra and recognizable spoofs of Ironman characters like Tony Stark, Ltnt. James Rhodes, and Agent Coulson. But everyone's gender-bent and horny! (Just for fun! lol)
Kudos: 1





	1. 1 - The Airship

CHAPTER ONE

THE AIRSHIP

Tanya’s airship took off from the Southern Water Tribe before dawn with a host of crewmembers, Water Tribe guards, and the woman herself. 

She put on hot music that screamed with guitars and excessive drum beats and a singer who stretched their voice with reedy rocking volume. Ocean-kissed air swept in through the windows of her cabin. She sat on one of two benches that faced each other in the company of three guards. Their private room was framed with onyx-metal and steel. One access connected them to the rest of the airship via a spiral staircase made of grates and rails. It ascended to higher sections that were blocked from view by the solid ceiling. At the rearmost wall was an emergency cabinet labeled with a white and red cross.

She sipped an amber-colored drink that burned as she took each mouthful. Ice clinked against the glass. 

A morning in Spring’s weather warmed their chamber, their faces, and their fronts with sunlight. A thin cloud here or there floated above them. Water moved of its own pattern below them for miles and miles, pushing and pulling, ebbing and cresting, in constant motion.

The men wore blue and gray vests, collars with white fur, and boots made of brown hide with snow treads on their soles. A couple spears with tusks for points leaned on the seats. One man swayed a club between his knees that ended in a pearly orb for a head, and another man wrung his sling around both hands back and forth. None of them had more than peach fuzz on their chin and jawline – they couldn’t even grow it.

A radio at their feet blasted rock music at its highest volume. 

She caught the gaze of a guard over the top of her sunglasses.

He cleared his throat and sat straighter. He placed the club across his lap.

“Are you taking me somewhere to kill me?” She got their attentions, all three at once, for the first time since they boarded. 

Their withdrawn expressions quirked with new caution.

“Seriously, I feel like I’ve done something to upset you guys. What did I do?”

“Take it easy on them. They’re horny,” said the one with empty hands. Their effeminate pitch contrasted with the bulk in their chest and shoulders.

“My spirits, you’re a woman.” Stunned, Tanya leaned flush against the back of her seat. “I never would have noticed by looking at you. I thought of you as a warrior, first. That’s what we’re going for, right?”

The boys, barely men, fidgeted in their seats, thinned their mouths, and looked opposite ways. 

Tanya added, “I’m having a hard time not looking at you, now. You have excellent bone structure.” She traced down her own jawline starting beneath her ears and moving down to her keen chin. “Have you had surgery?”

The guards chuffed with stifled laughter while grins broke across their faces.

“Go ahead! Laugh! It’s funny. You think that’s funny, you should’ve seen your faces.”

The girl among them adjusted in her seat while she spoke. “Miss, I didn’t realize until we met that your Mom’s portrait is hanging up in the armory back home. You really do look like Mrs. Sato.”

“Except your hair,” said one guy who had his hand up halfway in an uncertain classroom gesture. “You have your other Mom’s hair. It’s really pretty.”

“Of course it is. Don’t forget who you’re talking to.” Tanya tipped her drink in his direction. “I can fuck your brains out and no one will believe you, so I hope you keep your pants on when you talk about my folks.”

“Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to offend you or anything.”

“Don’t apologize, kiddo.” She leaned forward to swat his knee.

“Ma’am, do you think we could get your autograph?” said the second guy as he put his sling down and opened his belt pouch.

“Sure, give it to me, daddy,” she said, kneeling on the steel floor in front of him. She cozied up between his thighs, scrunching her shoulders to fit closer and closer. She took a notepad and ink pen that he handed her. Her stare and a foxy grin forced enough of her personality to pin him into his seat with his back straight. He gulped. The other two covered their faces and roamed their gazes for something – anything to avoid the presentation.

She plucked off the ink pen’s cap with her lips, flattened the notepad over his lap, and signed her name in a flurry across the first blank page. The whole time, she grappled him in place with the stare of a mesmerist. His reaction lit her eyes with a thrill.

“I better not see this photocopied for sale tomorrow.” She returned his things one by one into the pouch where they belonged, before she went to her seat.

“Nice,” he panted.

“Please, no compliments.” After a beat, she crossed one leg over the other in her charcoal-gray pants, pinching her thighs together. “I’m just kidding. I love compliments. Praise me, daddy. Tell me how much you love me?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but he did not have enough time to get it out.

An explosion went off in the distance.

Two warriors leapt to their feet. One of the guys to the spiral staircase while the girl snatched a spear. “Stay with Tanya,” she said as she hurried with rustles of wool and clamor of boots on metal.

Footsteps pounded the ceiling overhead. Voices went back and forth. Crewmembers scrambled to respond. Havoc spewed above them.

Another explosion, this one closer, lurched their cabin.

The two of her three guards were gone. They left her with the one who fitted a pellet into his sling. He whipped it round and round, ready to fire at the stairs any moment. 

Tanya clutched the second spear in both hands. “What’s going on?”

Metal shrieked. Booms thundered again and again. Their cabin groaned with effort through its ceiling.

An explosion sent propellers, beams, and panels streaking to the ocean, and bodies flew with them. They plummeted, spun, whipped their limbs about, until they struck the water’s surface like bugs against a windshield. White froth bloomed from each impact.

Their compartment tilted right.

Both of them staggered until they hit the wall.

He went to the stairs. “Damn it. Damn it!”

“What about me? Give me your sling.” Ten feet of slanted floor separated them.

“Stay here, Miss Sato.” he said.

“Give me your sling!”

“Stay here!” He struggled up the stairs.

Their cabin split on that side. Bolts and gears exploded outward. That half of the floor and wall blasted open and threw its contents: the stairs, the radio, the warrior. His shriek split the air. A drop hundreds, thousands of feet high pulled him to the ocean.

Tanya’s spear skidded until it sailed out, because she dropped it to clutch her only anchor, the bench on which she had sat. A scratch was open on her brow. Her clothes were torn in a few spots where she had scuffed herself. Wind ripped at her hair and the loose pieces of her outfit. She fought gravity to keep her grip.

The airship turned in place out of control. Pieces of it and crewmembers alike dropped out of the sky. Distant screams went in one ear and out the other. Fire burned her nostrils.

At the back section of her cabin, she spotted the cabinet. She clawed with hands and feet up a steep slope. Streaks of her own blood left behind every move she made. She reached for the handle but came half a foot short. 

She punched the metal door at its lowest corner. She struck again. She struck until she dented it enough to wiggle her fingers inside. From there, she yanked. She grunted with the effort when her fingers stung and the metal sliced her. She ripped the door off its hinges, almost lost her grip to drop it out of the way, because it smacked her on its way down.

Emergency kits spilled over and around. They bounced off her head, shoulders, and back. From their midst, she snatched a life-vest wrapped in plastic, while she hung by her fingers from the cabinet. Her shoulder throbbed with effort. Warmth let down her wrist and into the sleeve of her windbreaker where it stained red.

Someone shouted from the opposite end of the cabin.

A stranger in yellow, orange, and maroon somersaulted, pounced onto her bench, and whirled their arms in wide arcs. They wore a mask over their lower face. When they punched both hands in her direction, wind blasted her.

She crashed into the cabinet. Her back crunched against the edge.

Darkness stole her at once when she lost consciousness. She let go. They caught her in both arms, thrust off the seat aided by a cushion of air beneath their slippers, and took to the open sky with their captive. 

Half a dozen partners in the same design of jumpsuits joined them with membranes between their limbs. They gathered in a V-shape and glided away from the airship.

A cloud zoomed out of place and banked downward to meet them.

Something the size of a mammoth swooped underneath. Its speed and mass roared in flight. Six legs were curled close to its belly. Cool umber-brown fur covered it from head to tail, except for a pattern of cream-colored tiger stripes on its face. Its tail slapped the air behind it. 

Every stranger in the V-formation settled on its back, one after the other, with the same comfort of someone who steps through the threshold of their home. They alighted in a soft-backed saddle made of wood and leather.

A sky bison escorted them the rest of the way to safety.

Meanwhile, smoke heaped off the airship in char-black chimneys. The hull gaped in several spots. Fire spat out its windows and holes. Bits and pieces broke off, plummeted at top speed, and hit the ocean surface with booms of water. 

The vehicle banked out of control in a roundabout turn as it followed its fragments to a watery grave.


	2. 2 - The Iroh Award

Thirty-six hours earlier, a commemoration video played in front of a crowd of people.

It summarized Asami Sato’s achievements within Future Industries, which included the butterfly mechs that worked together to destroy a metal titan over Republic City, jumpsuits designed for the Air Nomads to assist gliding, and the revolutionary vessel capable of transporting whole families in a comfortable airborne shelter between continents. 

It concluded her memorial with a nod to her passing and the newspaper headline that described it.

The company had been passed to her Board of Directors including long-time friend and war hero, Mako. He had maintained the business’ public affairs until Sato’s only living daughter turned 21, old enough to inherit the reins. 

Eyes of the world had followed Tanya Sato since she designed her first battery at eight, and her first automobile from scratch at fifteen. The video showed news clippings with photos and headlines where her younger self posed with her finished products.

She overhauled Future Industries’ product lines. She invigorated Earth Kingdom factories with automated robots that replaced manned conveyor belts for craftsmanship. Together, she and Mako revised the Fire Nation air force with heat signature-targeting missiles. She outfitted the Northern and Southern Water Tribes with defense artillery.

She transformed war for mankind, all four nations, beyond their wildest dreams. In the Avatar’s wake, she brought to them what they never had before.

After the video, applause erupted from all corners of the room. Men in suits, women in gowns, strangers in glittery jewels affixed to their ears and necks and fingernails, joined in a rally to celebrate her. They sat around white dining tables with plates of entrees eaten partway and tall drinks of champagne to mellow them out. Faces nodded to each other. Smiles broke. Blush rode their cheeks pink with one part drink, another part pride.

Ronda Jiggy took the stage in front of them, above them.

She wore cream and ochre-colored fabric with a manila sash to hold the ensemble around her waist. Boro beads and an Air Nomad totem hung from her neck. When she walked, she swayed. When she smiled, she glowed. Lights shined on her brown skin which reflected the accents of her lipstick, foundation, and eye shadow. She carried her hair in a frizzy bun which she had clasped and spun with gold for the occasion.

She eased the crowd with a gesture of both hands. When she spoke, her voice rang true and solid. She had the presence of glamour, that glossy tone that melted honey butter when she opened her mouth. Her voice had the closest thing to a taste as any voice ever had.

“This Spring’s Iroh Award recipient is my companion and very dear mentor. You know her as Future Industries’ daughter. You might also know her as the Avatar’s daughter. I am proud to call her my friend. Please, join me in thanking our Most Honorable Citizen, Tanya Sato.”

The crowd put their hands together in a roar of importance, of esteem among the highest nobles. Their applause thundered into every corner, into the chandeliers above, from every dining table. Their applause went on for too long. Some members of the audience turned in their seats, swiveled their heads, searching every which way for the guest of honor.

One person slowed their clapping. Three more followed their example. Holes in the applause spread as more and more guests put their hands down, lost for what to do.

Ronda fixed one person in the audience with a stare that asked for help.

Mako was clapping on and on after the people around him had stopped. His sharp eyebrows slanted in, and his disapproving frown whetted the rest of his features. He wore a double-breasted suit of brown and raven-black with red tassels on the shoulders. When he stood, he towered just past six feet of lean, acute cords and taut joints. He grabbed the head of a cane to ease his left leg.

He joined Ronda on the stage, though he struggled up the steps with a grunt before he reached her side.

He accepted the award of gold bars and masterwork decorum, a trophy shaped in fire with soft metal, gleaming under the chandeliers’ light. At an angle, it caught Mako’s eyes. The sight, its weight in both hands, its profound meaning to come his way, hitched his breath. He gaped with speechlessness long enough to be awkward, before he cleared his throat and drew himself as straight as possible.

“Wow. This is…wow.” His voice was amplified by a microphone stuck a few inches from his face. “Then, again, I’m not Tanya Sato.”

Laughter bubbled here and there from the crowd. 

“If I were Miss Sato, I would say how thrilled I am to be rewarded as the Most Honorable Citizen of the Year in the name of Iroh the First. Here’s the funny thing about Ms. Sato you might not know about her that I do, and Ms. Jiggy does. She’s always working.”


	3. 3 - Most Honorable Citizen

Tanya Sato burst the cap of a champagne bottle so foam exploded, slipped down its neck, and drooled over her fingers. The drink slicked her hands, down her wrists, and drip-drip-dripped to the dance floor. She squealed with joy as she shook the bottle up and down. Splashes, sparkling alcohol, and foam sprayed all about her in spurts that flecked her face and hair and front.

A dozen girls and boyfriends surrounded her who roared in unison. They bounced up and down to the bass of an electric song. Chromatic disco lights lit their forms with alternating colors. All the colors streamed from a disco ball that dangled from the ceiling.

It started with blue and shifted to green. Green faded into red. Red brightened with yellow. The cycle repeated when yellow shifted to blue. Spots of white laced back and forth like spirits who frolicked across the floor, walls, and ceiling. Theater lights also angled beams that tilted up and down, panned side to side, in constant motion.

Vivid bass thudded from music speakers into the air with volumes of unseen energy that traveled through their ears, into their bloodstreams, and made goosebumps on their skin.

They danced to it with their hands in the air, sweat on their skin, and pulsing ecstasy. Their outfits, whether it was a sister’s party gown and jewelry or a boyfriend’s unbuttoned shirt and necktie, were wet with a mixture of their bodies. They packed together tight enough to grind hips against hips, rears against groins, backs against chests. Hairdos had come undone down their necks and shoulders.

Tanya dunked her bottle over herself. It streamed down her umber-brown hair, seeped into her scalp, and drooled over her face. She whipped her hair sending flecks this way and that. Champagne slipped down her cheeks and she tasted its sparkles as it went past her mouth.

She screamed into her personal paradise at top volume.

She spent this way forever as drink flushed through her, on her, all around her from an endless fountain.

Her outfit glued to her finer curves with alcohol stains that absorbed deep. The dress bunched in tight places: her sides, over her cleavage, and around her thighs. It clamped in places that left little to the imagination, where her underwear showed its outlines around her breasts and her rear end. She had removed her heels long ago.

The thumping floor slicked with spills through which she pranced, wetting her toes and heels. Her pearl necklace and beaded earrings glinted at the right angles with all the four colors.

Ronda Jiggy stood in her way. “Where were you?” She had to shout through the din to be heard. Her eyebrows slanted and her nostrils flared.

Tanya slipped her arm behind Ronda. Their sides pressed flat together. “Hey, look at that!” She took the Iroh Award and showed it to the closest boyfriend half a foot taller than her. “I don’t have six of those lying around at home.” She plopped a kiss on it and handed it away. “Take that, daddy.”

“I waited for you,” said Ronda in a softer tone.

“And you’re here, now. Let’s go.” She smacked Ronda’s closest ass cheek, not that anybody heard in the tumult. Her tight glute had just enough thicc fat to squish.

“I’m not dancing,” said Ronda. She adjusted her shoulders, twisted out of Tanya’s embrace, and faced her front to front.

Tanya caught her hands in hers. “Come on.”

“I’m not.”

She tugged so their fronts tightened together, breast to breast, hip to hip, thighs to thighs. Only their clothes stopped them from being any closer. She whined. “Come on!”

“I’m not doing it. I’m disappointed in you.”

Tanya blew a raspberry against Ronda’s mouth.

A chorus of raspberries and joyful cackles erupted.

“Take your mind off it. Forget about it. One-two stomp. Cha cha, real smooth.”

Ronda jerked back into someone’s awaiting grasp, catching her by her upper arms to hold her steady.

Tanya pedaled her hands round and round, dance-stepped, swayed her hips, cooed through her puckered lips.

“You’re a hoe, Tanya. Seriously.” Ronda snatched her friend’s wrist and led her away. She parted the dancers midway, swatting them to the left and right to shoo from the path she made.

Tanya blew kisses behind her to one boyfriend’s surfboard abs, one of the girls’ rounded love handles, to the new trophy boy, with mwah! After mwah! After mwah!

They strode together out of the dance hall and away, around a couple corners and across carpet floors, down marble stairs and beneath vanilla-white lights. The glow was translucent and soft. The air itself seemed to distill them to blurry orbs, or perhaps that was Tanya’s drunken filter. They passed smells of shopping mall cologne mixed with brass polish. 

The whole way, they talked, but she remembered nothing that was said. She laughed from the pit of her bellows. She shouted loud enough to turn heads in her wake. She remembered later how the words made her feel no matter what they meant.

They united in a glass-and-gold lobby over marble floors with Mako, plus a gathering who belonged to tonight’s event. They formed a circle to barricade the three people. The entourage struggled against a sudden crowd. 

News reporters spied them between the guards and threw questions, until they were shuffled out of view for the next wave. 

Celebrities waved, cat-called, and wolf-whistled from disparate sections of the lobby. 

Their humor roused Tanya’s wild tiger, if only Ronda let her off the chain. Her insides spiked out of her control. Her hunger ached in a few key places so fiercely, her body made goosebumps and shivered. Her chi starved. She needed something tonight.

They passed through a set of doors that exited the building’s front. The outside world breathed of a steel jungle, the all-around odor of cars running empty on gasoline and drinks tickling the air with spicy alcohol. Vehicles roved pavement in a constant sound from distant streets. Unseen railways sent busses and subways speeding along iron tracks. 

Light beams extended skyward at dozens of different angles, because everybody had the brightest energy and nobody could outdo one another. The factions of the city fought for the attention of the stars. They fought so hard and so brightly, they muted the night sky of any stars to speak of, just a waxing moon nearly full.

Ronda pulled Tanya and one of the guards from their entourage to the street-side where a Future Industries vehicle awaited them. The luxury sports car gleamed with polish under the closest lamp-posts. Its headlights streamed out cones of light onto the pavement, the engine was running, and the guard opened the passenger-side door for Tanya to get in.

“I’m seeing you tomorrow, yeah?” Ronda waved them good-bye before she led the rest like groupies who trailed after a pop band. “Don’t be late!”

Before she got in the car, a man’s voice called her by the name Sato. He said, “I’m doing an article for Republic City. I just want to ask a few questions.” He ended it with an uncertain jilt in his tone.

The guard muttered close by Tanya’s ear, “He’s big,” which persuaded her to face the reporter.

He wore black and white over his muscled chest and arms, a tuxedo that swelled to bursting with stretch marks over his bod. The tux’s sleeves ended midway down his upper arms, such that his biceps and well-developed arms showed bare to the world. Hair covered his forearms. A tattoo done in tribal scar style peeked out in cool detail. Grizzly hair covered his chin, jaw, and upper lip that matched his ebon hair.

He smirked. He was cooler than smiles. He presented a notepad with ink pen and closed the distance between them with some sort of panache in his strut.

“What do you think of the media’s nickname for you, La Winci of our time?” The cleft in his chin, his dimples, and the muscle in his bearing belied the keen glint suddenly filling his stare. He toned the question as unbelievable as it made her feel.

“Ridiculous. I don’t paint.”

“What about your other nickname – the Avatar of Death?”

“That one’s not bad.”

“Some members of the media are concerned your Industry’s sales to all four nations escalates jealousy and a desire to use their deadly tools for war – placing you in a position to profit no matter who goes into battle.”

“My Mom developed a philosophy in her older years. Peace means having a bigger dick than the other guy. I promise you, the moment our nations let go their weapons and put their pants on, I will spend the rest of my days designing dildos and condoms and building fertility clinics.”

“You rehearse that much?”

“Every night in front of the mirror before bed-time. I’d like to show you first-hand with my collection of sex protection.”

“Mrs. Sato and Hiroshi before her struggled for years to advance mankind with on-hand technology. It’s only after she engaged with Avatar Korra did she revolutionize the weapons department. Some have accused her, and now you, of war profiteering.”

“Tell me, do you also plan to report on Future Industries’ new assembly lines that reduced factory casualties by two-hundred percent? Submarines that can study aquatic life in Water Tribe oceans? Earth Kingdom pesticides that protect harvests from roach-rocs? All of those inventions, Future Industries, daddy.”

“You ever lose sleep over the millions of people your weapons might kill one day?”

“Come to my place.” She fingered the loop of his necktie and tugged him closer. They leveled each other nose to nose, feeling breath after breath and heat that steamed between them. Her sparks flew. Inner bolts rattled. Her unseen screws stripped in their holes. “I’ll show you how much sleep I lose.” She showed clenched teeth through her grin.

She fixed him in place with a stare that drove home her point, a stare that pierced through his eyes and plunged into the deepest place where his id dwelled. She awoke it on the spot with her own. Their hypnotism transformed from interrogation into a contest of urges. He mouthed one noise of astonishment.

Before they knew it, time and a car drive and a struggle of arms brought them to Tanya’s home with one tell-tale thwump on her guest bed.


	4. 4 - The Reporter

She shoved him on his back to the floor mat.

She mounted his lap.

She yanked him by his necktie so their lips forced together in a locked steamy kiss.

Their animal noises rose and fell, grunting together, gasping in places they could get air, giggling or chuckling over how they went at each other. They nipped and tugged. They bit down until one winced then smooched the pain away. 

They wrestled their tongues round and round, back and forth, in unending power struggle for one or another’s mouth where everything felt hot enough to melt candy. They swayed their heads in tandem to the waves of their tongues’ wrestling match. When she pinned him to the base of his mouth, she pushed. When he thrusted into her throat, she pulled. 

They took turns to discover the roof, walls, and teeth of each other, taking sweet time to taste each other and share saliva.

In the meantime, she ripped his shirt open by its buttons. His pecs seemed to shine in the cool dim light. He was covered with dark hair. 

She moved her hands to either side of his neck where she started her progress downward. His firm chest yielded to her touch when she pushed him to the mat, but the upper body strength she found was dense enough, he could have refused. She played with a bear of a man who permitted her on top, for now. 

She broke their kiss as she slid her touch down his ironed abs, honed by a mixture of exercise and testosterone.

She rode his lap and grunted with satisfaction. The pressure beneath her swelled to greater and greater force the longer they went. She unharnessed him by yanking apart his belt. It hissed through the loops of his pants as she took it off, and she discarded it.

Craving ruled them in unison. Their shared lust made throbs of chi the longer they spent together. Unseen energy pushed and pulled, crested and ebbed, back and forth from her chakras to his and back to hers. They grinded up and down, their bodies flowing in streamline, bending each others sexes to their respective wills.

He stopped time when he flattened his palm at the base of her neck where it met her collar bone. Their smell of near-sex and cologne mixed. Her harvest leaf-brown hair framed her cheeks and neck. Wisps hung over her brow. In the near-dark, her eyes resembled onyx gems wavering at the moment with uncertainty. She wore only underwear, a bra that supported her breasts with firm cups and panties that clamped around her lower body. She panted for air in a way that made her chest rise and fall. Sweat oiled her such that the frame of her muscles, every mass and curve and sinew shined on their own.

She placed both hands on his shoulders, then climbed into the back of his hair.

He asked, “Can I?”

Her breath hitched. Her root chakra boiled. Her desire screamed to be satisfied.

She answered against his lips that tasted like the champagne she had been downing an hour ago. That spark stuck her to him in drunken stupor. One word slipped from her into him that inspired the rest of their consensual sex, one word that made all the difference.

“Yes.”

They engaged and they swelled and they burst, going on and on and on into the early morning.

The next thing the reporter knew, he awoke face-down on King-sized bedding. Fleece sheets were strewn around him. Air conditioning cooled his back, shoulders, and calves. A ceiling fan spun at low speed that gave off an ambient hum. Bird song came in through the closed windows, through the curtains that let in slivers of morning light. He inhaled the residue of their sweat and their sex and their orgasms.

A black bath robe with red and yellow plaid hung on a clothes hanger from the bedroom door. He cozied into it, wrapped himself up, and spread one of the curtains.

The bedroom stuck out from the main house like an atrium with windows going all around a 270-degree view. It overlooked a mountain peak that sloped down and up, banked in waves for miles on end, each one lower than the first. What resembled at first green fur carpeted the mountain range, every square mile verdant with spring foliage, until they turned into tree-tops grown so close together, they let no other room for a city. Sky above went on for azure miles without a cloud in sight.

He entertained the idea of Miss Sato as a hiker or a lumberjack or a wildlife preservationist, but he scoffed with amusement.

He left the bedroom, crossing polished tiled floor in his bare feet, making only the gentle pat, pat, pat of footsteps into a common area.

Save for the frost-white tiles, the rest of the lounge was made with a rich aesthetic of steel-gray, brown, and teal. Windows forty feet tall let in daylight from a balcony. Mezzanines on the second and third levels overhead looked down on him from their railings. Steps descended in the center of the floor to a sitting area made of padding and leather and drink holders. One wall of the common area had a bar with which to serve drinks, benches along another wall, and an empty stage with metal poles going up to the ceiling. A fountain made of glass, a marble basin, and a technicolor light show ran constant water from ceiling to floor.

Footsteps approached from one of two corridors ahead of him.

A dark-haired man wore booty shorts showing off his thicc thighs, oiled to gleaming and shaved. His fern-green vest missed its top two buttons where it exposed his barrel chest and shoulders made of peak bulk. He had braided his beard with tassels and sugar-coating of gold. Make-up glossed his eyes and lips. Foundation defined his cheeks and forehead. His high-heels forced prominence into his calves, rear-end, and chest. He had draped a plastic dry-cleaning bag over his left arm.

He sounded chipper and clean-cut when he spoke. “Good morning, buddy! Here’s your suit that we got dry-cleaned and pressed. We also have a vehicle outside to take you anywhere you’d like to go. I made some snacks if you wanna take some with you. Who can resist sea salt caramel pretzel turtles, huh?”

As the reporter accepted his dry cleaning with a bemused smile, he did not know whether to be more taken aback by the condition of his clothes or the man-servant. “You must be the famous Bolin. Pro-bender. Actor. War hero.”

“You recognize my work? That’s amazing!” He gestured down the northern corridor that went to the front door and opened the way for his guest to lead.

“You’ve accomplished so much in your prime,” the reporter went on without moving. “You could be doing anything with your middle-age. You have career choices more than ninety-five percent of people can ever dream of having. But Ms. Sato orders you to pick up the dry-cleaning?”

“I do anything and everything Ms. Sato requires.” Bolin gestured again with both arms and continued to speak with renewed emphasis. “I even take out the trash! Will that be all, sir?”


	5. 5 - Bolin and Tanya

Tanya played head-banging rock music from a radio that blasted screaming guitar verses, concussive beats and brass, with a reedy voice that carried them through lyrics and choruses and the bridge. They mixed together in a cacophony about frustration, defensiveness, and pushing back. The beat got her bobbing her head back and forth in tempo while she worked.

Dozens of overhead panels filled her studio with fluorescent white light with which to see. It reached every corner and illuminated every work surface. 

Onyx-black tables formed a rectangular perimeter. Drapes covered them to protect the contents: kits, equipment, spare parts of machinery. Tool boxes were stuffed underneath, put in stacks that were organized by frequency of use. Precision tools were under there from a variety of different manufacturers. Cases protected unused glass beakers that ranged between the size of grams all the way up to holding gallons. Shelves carried scrolls made from blue paper, vellum, canvas, written with plans for mechanisms untold.

She currently had a phallic instrument in front of her. It was maple-brown in color, except the head at its topmost two inches was lighter than the shaft. Veins were pitch dark, and they seemed to web the exterior from its base and up to three-quarters its height. The base was its widest point, to act as an anchor that stood it upright. 

It had a square panel on one side which was open by its hinges, disguised as part of a vein. She inserted two tools: a tweezer tiny enough to pluck sand by the grain and a blowtorch that made her hands look giant. Blue fire lit up the table surface, the dildo, and her front.

She wore a welder’s mask to protect her face and neck, fire-proof gauntlets made of dense leather, and a smock colored like gray sediments striped with yellow and blue. Paint had speckled its chest and sleeves ages ago that had never come out. Beneath her welding uniform, she wore a tee-shirt and gray cargo pants to work.

Her music faded.

Bolin’s voice came from an unseen somewhere behind her, but she spoke over him before he got out much. “Don’t turn down my music.”

Bolin went on with his smiling voice, a tone that cheered her on no matter how she scorned him. “I feel like you might be late for something. Aren’t you flying south right now?”

She turned off the fire and tilted the lid of her mask to see with her naked eyes. “Doesn’t feel like it, yet.”

“That’s right! Your airship’s supposed to take off thirty minutes ago. Shoot!”

“What’s the point in owning an airship if it takes off without me?” She put down her tools to either side of the work desk with the tiniest clinks of metal on metal. She held up the dildo to her eyes and studied the interior at a better angle through her crinkled expression.

“Ronda’s waiting. We should get you gone, miss.” 

She grumbled something else about her own airship belonging to her, deciding her own schedule, but Bolin went on unfazed. 

He carried a slate clipboard stacked with reports and print-outs, with his ink pen poised over them. “Before you leave, I have a couple things I need to ask! The Earth King is donating a trio of tapestries. We need to figure out where to put them.”

“Are they good?” She got up, standing a few inches shorter than him and dwarfed by his bulk.

“They’re nice! They’re of his mother and the badgermoles.” He took a couple steps that herded her away from the work table. She turned her back to it and smelled espresso that had not been there a minute ago. He went on to admit, “They’re a little bit old-fashioned. There’s some age settling in them. Other than that, they’re fine!”

“Trash them. All three.” She came to the end table where her electric radio now played a soft ballad rock song. Bolin had brought down a silver tray. A tiny mug smaller than a nugget was filled with a piping hot black drink and beside it, a pretzel treat with caramel, pecans, and sea salt. She lobbed her gloves across the room.

“The Ember Island Players have their open auditions….”

“This summer! Don’t bother me with that shit already.” Caramel cream and savory salt mixed together when she bit into the pretzel. Bits crumbled down her front, so she swept them to the floor.

“I know, I know, miss. They just, you know, sent another request letter. I’m just passing the message along. The theater folks do love you.”

“How’d the dude take it?” She said between mouthfuls.

Bolin lifted his gaze to the ceiling. They both knew at once who she meant. The nameless side character made the same annoyed aftertaste in them both. “Like a champ.” He then removed the visor from her head with one hand and placed it atop the radio.

Her hair tumbled down her ears, neck, and almost brushed her shoulders. She shook it to and fro. Bangs smothered her temples and forehead.

He said, “Fire Lord Iroh the Second has put the two orphaned dragon eggs on auction. Your Board of Directors has put up a price for the wyrmlings to be incubated in your Forge Main.”

Her eyebrows shot up. She wiped the crumbs of her snack across her front, more fragments spilled to the floor, and she spoke with food crunching in her mouth, with cocoa melting on her tongue. “Are they a good representation of our partnership?”

He hesitated over this one, winding his uncertainty back and forth. “It’s meaningful. But you know...they’re kind of invaluable. They’re going extremely expensive.”

“I want them.” She indeed the belt of her apron with both hands behind her back. “Need them. Buy them now.”

He shrugged and made a line of notes across the top page of his clipboard.

“Why are you trying to hustle me out of here?” She tossed her apron onto the floor.

He at once plucked it up, shook it out, and draped its neck onto a nearby wall-mount placed specifically for this purpose.

In a secondhand tone that tried to pass it off with nonchalance, he said, “I have some plans later.”

“Did I authorize this?” She squared up to him face to face with her chin up. She propped one hand on her hip while the other pinched her mug’s handle. By now, its caffeine aroma had overtaken the studio’s industrial odor. She absorbed the morning aura while Bolin spoke.

“I’m allowed to have plans on my birthday.”

“It’s your birthday?”

He feigned a smile. His eyes were softer around the edges. “Sure is, miss.”

“I knew that. Already?”

“It’s the same day as last year. I was just joking about that with my bro last night.”

She smacked her lips and cleaned the corners of her teeth with her tongue to get the last few crumbs. “Get yourself something from me and Mom.”

“I already did.” He swelled his chest with satisfaction and straightened himself and the smile reached his eyes.

“And?” She tilted forward on her toes, the eagerness of a woman on the edge of her figurative seat. The light touched her eyes at the right angle, the corners of her lips quirked, and she searched his expression to know more. 

Beside herself, she wanted Bolin to be happy. She provided for him the best benefits, the highest pay, but at times he proved it wasn’t enough. She wanted to give him more than money, more than gifts, more than benefits. He deserved it for how much he did. He deserved the world, after all his time. It was everything she could to give him that. He deserved joy. 

Anybody could be bought with a certain amount of coin. Anybody could smile with the right sized charity. But Bolin, she wanted to give him joy. No amount of money and no gift felt good enough to fill him with joy. 

He was more than her assistant. He was the closest thing to treasure she had ever owned.

He was more than a war hero. He was a savior who limped her through day after day. 

She wondered if Mom ever understood how much he truly meant to the family. If only she could see how priceless the veteran proved to be.

He punched skyward with two fists. The rally in his voice burst with energy. “I’m so dang excited for it, Ms. Sato. I can’t wait!”

She gulped her espresso in one shot. The flavor of concentrated energy, something like gasoline washed through rich soil, slashed down her tongue. It steamed her insides with the willpower to continue today. She smacked her lips a couple times and cleaned out her mouth with the sides of her tongue, because she enjoyed the remnants of flavor before it all slipped down.

She avoided looking at his face, since hers had gone flush-red with the heat in her mug. She handed it away. “Will that be all, Mr. Bolin?”

“That’s it, Ms. Sato.”

She hid her fiery cheeks with a wave of her hands on the way to the workshop’s exit. She cleared her throat along the way.


	6. 6 - Ronda and Tanya

Tanya took her own car, one of the six she owned, on a high-speed race along neighborhood streets, the express route, and aside the southern coast. With the top down, wind rippled her hair and the loose sleeves of her jacket. Morning sun warmed her from head to foot. She zipped corners at street intersections. She took curves in the road with smooth tracks of her steering wheel. She floored her gas pedal and struck the clutch and shifted gears with the dexterity of a professional driver.

In the beginning, she spotted a sports car made of midnight-black and silver in her rear-view mirror. She could not see through their tinted windows, but she recognized its grills, headlights, and front bumper. Once she knew, her smirk grew from cheek to cheek.

She lost them after an hour of speeding, but she kept up the race unto her final destination.

Another hour of travel she made alone.

In the final three minutes, her pursuer swerved down a highway ramp behind her. They rejoined the chase. She led them through stop-lights, streaked past civilians, and shifted side-to-side between lanes.

She at last drove into the airport where she was meant to be hours ago.

She popped out of her car as the Future Industries valet-driver came up behind her. Their engines died down to rest. 

Last night’s guard who had taken her drunk ass home stepped out of the vehicle.

Tanya cackled at him. “I thought I lost you.” She wore sneakers, charcoal gray track pants with pockets and bagginess around the legs, and a scarlet windbreaker that rustled with every move she made. Her sunglasses reflected the near-noontime sunlight like pearls. Her grin showed her teeth, and her hair was a disheveled haze.

“You did, miss.” Her driver went to the hatch of his vehicle, where he took out a luggage brief-case belonging to her. “I had to cut through Yingyi,” he explained, the town through which he had to speed to get on her tail.

“I gotcha, I gotcha.”

The airport’s pavement gave off heat through the soles of her shoes, hotter than the spring air around her. The shadow of her airship did little to cool things. 

Steel-gray panels and windows formed the ship’s exterior. Fins for stability stuck out at odd angles. Propellers and jet engines for propulsion jutted from the rear-end while the driver’s cockpit had atrium-style windows to get the best widespread view of the landscape. An aesthetic of gleaming metal, cobalt-blue, and lavender colored the outside and its many parts.

It stood upright on four wheels at the end of stalks. The stalks, like legs, ascended into joints of the airship’s underbelly, where they best supported the mass of metric tons of metal. In their midst, a carriage hung from the belly with an all-around view, windows that could see to all four sides. Its hatch door faced her, held open on hinges.

Ronda Jiggy stood in the doorway with her arms folded and her back leaned against the frame. She bit her teeth so clenched, her cheeks were taut. Sunglasses also covered her eyes, but her disappointment etched everything else about her face. She wore a uniform made of garnet-red fabric, golden-yellow seams, and an Air Nation symbol on the jacket’s left chest. Her cream-colored pants were harnessed around her waist and left thigh, where they holstered a pair of tonfas. Her black boots were tied and knotted and shined to military precision. Barely a wrinkle nor a piece of lint stained her uniform. She was dressed to a perfect cut.

“Four hours,” she said. “Four hours you’ve kept me waiting. What the hell is wrong with you, hoe?”

Tanya shoved through her and the door, knocking her out of balance. “Waiting on you know, she said from the inside, as her guard followed with luggage.

With their host finally acquired, the airship’s crew locked all their hatches, secured everything inside, and activated the engines with a few deft flicks of switches on the control board.

In a matter of moments, they took to the air to begin their journey south.

Meanwhile, Ronda and Tanya found seats for themselves in the bottom-most cabin. Two benches faced each other, enough room for perhaps five to six people to sit in comfort with room to spread their legs. Tanya relaxed on her back where she took up one of the whole benches.

A host arrived to serve them with a menu for food and alcohol. He dressed in air stewardess navies, whites, and yellows. The V-neck of his collar came halfway down his chest to show the hair and definition in his pecs. His skirt ended shy of his knees, while his heels forced him to stand up-right: calves and ass and upper body poised.

He smiled his delicious way with cherry red lipstick. “How do you do, Ms. Sato.”

Ronda was already muttering when he arrived, but Tanya didn’t quite hear. The steward charmed her to sit up and put on her own smile, a flick of her hair, and a more presentable position. “Hi, yes, can we get some gin and lemonade?”

Ronda shook her head. “This isn’t the time for that. We need to be in business mode.”

“We are in business mode. I’m just talking about a drink.”

“Hot towel, ma’am?” A second steward who was dressed in identical uniform offered in front of them a ceramic plate. Two rolled-up hand towels steamed, and the ladies took one each.

“Why do you keep doing this?” Ronda unrolled her towel, just a square cloth a bit bigger than her face. “It’s like you can’t take care of yourself. I can’t leave you alone, can I.”

“What do you mean? You leave me alone all the time.”

“When I do, you’re always getting into shit. You don’t show up. You’re truant. You drink yourself to oblivion. You fuck the easiest guys you can get your hands on.”

“It’s all right. You’re jealous. I know just how to fix this.”

The steward cut in, “Will that be all, Ms. Sato?”

“Yes, that’s it. I’m cutting you off,” said Ronda. “She doesn’t want anything.” She propped a briefcase beside her on the bench and clicked its two buckles out of place to open it.

“If we’re gonna be working, we may as well make it fun, too, right? How about a whole bottle, please.” Tanya pinched the sleeve of her nearest steward and curled her lips. “Two glasses with ice for me and my friend here.”

“I’m serious.” Unsure who to pin down with her request, Ronda switched her gaze back and forth between Tanya and the server man, who was retreating to the stairwell that ascended deeper into the airship. “No. Don’t do this. I don’t want any.”

Tanya kicked a radio between their feet. She swiveled a couple of its dials to change stations, roving through static feedback to one channel, then another, then another. Each one played something else like commercials for merchants, a talk show interview, a brass band who sang with trombones. She found a channel putting out electric disco sounds that were catchy and repetitive. She bobbed her head.

In a matter of time, the whole setting changed from a business aesthetic Ronda tried to establish into a lazy affair.

The briefcase lay forgotten.

The women slouched side by side leaning into each other. 

Tanya struggled to keep her eyes open while her friend squashed into her and gabbled into her ear without end. The words slipped in one ear and out the other. She cradled a frosted glass that condensed between her fingers, down her wrist, and into her lap. Lemonade tarted her lips and sweetened her tongue, while the gin freed her mind to a happier state.

She tracked the movements of three men in front of her who swayed their hips to music. Three of the airship hosts, all dressed in the same outfits, heels, and make-up, winded around each other with the flair of a strip-tease. Sunlight streamed through the windows which made their skin glow. They had rolled up the waistline of their tops to expose their stomachs, exercised into stone-cut abs with treasure trails of body hair.

Ronda clutched her gin bottle in one hand and her own frosted glass in the other. Ice clinked when she waved her hands to emphasize herself. Between sentences here and there, she sipped from the gin bottle, putting her lips and downing one mouthful at a time.

The whole while, she raised her voice to be heard over the music. With every meaningful statement, she put definition in her words. She intended them with force of personality.

“I know when I put on this uniform, and I look in the mirror, all the other people who put on this same uniform, that they have my back, because that’s what we do for each other. Air nomad is in my blood, but none of my family know how hard it is to do what I do, see what I’ve seen, to put up with you.

“But those soldiers, the warriors of the four nations, those people I can trust, because we’ve been in the trenches together. You know what I mean? We’ve worked hard together. You and me, we’re warriors. You don’t put on the uniform, but I know you have it in you. You’re a warrior at heart. You just gotta apply yourself.”

“Can’t you see I’m a little distracted here?”

“No, you can’t be distracted!”


	7. Syngnathidae

Their airship arrived at the Southern Water Tribe late in the evening. Hours had gone since the sun set. Stars twinkled to say hello and that night’s waning crescent moon was visible.

They landed on a tundra with a view of the ocean hundreds of feet below which went on from eastern to western horizons.

Ronda and Tanya had put on furred overcoats of brown and white, gloves made of wool, and red scarves. They shoved their hands in their pockets, thankful to even have pockets, before they exited the hatch.

Later that night, everything that needed to be set up for a demonstration had been done, while the ladies gorged on southern food like roasted seal, cream cheese turnovers, and spiced wine mulled over hot coals. The Tribe chieftain and his best warriors sat around the table with them, perched on violet cushions and warmed by steam.

The congregation of leaders, Tanya, and her friend returned to the tundra’s plateau with full bellies and red cheeks. There, she faced them at the cliff’s edge. Brine and metallic cold tinted their nostrils. Wind came in from the North that chewed through their layers of clothing, into their bones. Water crashed hundreds of feet below where it hit the escarpment. The distant rush and boom and collapse provided white noise over which she projected her voice. 

She straightened her back, laced her hands behind her, and spoke from her diaphragm. She magnified her voice with a mixture of vocal training and charisma. Her force in words climbed with each passing sentence, sounding more and more intent.

“Friends and enemies. Fuckboys and bitches and non-binaries. They say wars are won in the General’s tent. I respectfully disagree. I prefer to win wars in the General’s bed. With central heating. Fleece blankets.” She quieted her swell of volume to a more pleasant tone. “And a little more intimacy.” One by one, she met the men’s eyes to press on them her meaning without having to rely only on speech. At one point, she met Ronda’s.

Ronda put her fist against her chest to say yes, she got this, to encourage Tanya onward.

“In the absence of a good time, when you need to defend yourselves, find an excuse to let one of these serpents off the chain. I personally guarantee you the bad guys won’t want to leave the bedroom.

“Fuckbois and bitches and nonbinaries, for your consideration: Syngnathidae.”

She spread her arms to either side in a gesture that called attention to the ocean behind her.

_Insert special effects here. Wow. It’s stunning. I’m in awe of the spectacle. What a display. Doge meme would be so proud. Look at that. It’s shwifty~ It’s fine~ It’s a dangerous demonstration. Wouldn’t want to be on that receiving end. Damn, Tanya, look at that hot mess. Glorious! Destructive! Terrifying! Much weapon. So display. Wow. Very Sea Serpent._

_End special effects narration, because fuck it. XD Maybe next time._

_But wait, she has two more charges that haven’t been set off, yet! That was just one use she demonstrated. This...isn’t even her final form? That’s a lot of damage. It’s over nine thousand! She crushed the sunglasses in her grasp._

She moved past her audience who were stepping closer together to speak in hushed voices, notes of awe and enticement in them. 

She only caught a few words here and there, like, “That’s a lot of damage,” and, “Who says?” and “Fire Nation”. She went through their middle in the direction of her airship, which had also watched the whole performance.

Her crew members from the ship staff dressed in winter coats padded thick enough to make them seem bigger and bulkier. Two of them reached over the lid of a footlocker four feet tall made of an aluminum and alabaster-white shell. They unlatched a couple buckles on its longest side and together lifted the lid. A cloud of frost wafted out past Tanya. The chill wave descended the sides of her portable refrigerator and rolled across the ground.

The staff stepped back while she reached in, plucked a bundle of red grapes, and showed them to her audience. She popped one in her mouth and spoke while she chewed. “I’ll be throwing in one of these for every purchase of three serpents or more.”

Shelves inside the footlocker showed frozen strawberries, whole pineapples, and nests of grapes. Fruits and cornucopias stuffed the interior to its corners, barely leaving room to breathe.

She moved aside for three of the Water Tribe warriors to see for themselves with gaping mouths and stunned looks. Two of them high-fived each other.

At once, Tanya’s guard pushed a phone into her empty hand, a brick-shaped device with one antenna stuck out from the top. When she put it up to her ear, Mako spoke to her, who had to be hundreds of miles overseas. The phone transported his voice via a live feed into her ear. 

“Tanya, hunny.”

She checked the night-time around her and judging the difference in their time zones, it had to be several hours into the dark morning where he was staying. “Daddy, what are you doing up?”

He mumbled, barely able to keep his words aloud. “I couldn’t sleep until I knew how it went.”

Tanya swiveled on the spot.

Water Tribe warriors dug into the cold box with armfuls of fruit. Glee lit them up and made them hoot and holler. 

The chieftain and his partner escorted Ronda to the tundra’s edge, where they emoted this way and that over the landscape. Ronda pointed there and over that way. Their deep conversation had stolen them away from the mass, going on and on about strategy, defense, and the sea serpent weapon.

The rest of the Tribe leaders were clumped in groups here and there, returning home with their backs facing the aftermath.

“Great,” she said. “Looks like it’s going to be a cash orgy.”

“Hey,” Mako cheered. “Well done, my girl. Way to go. Have a safe trip back, please?”

“Did you ever go on a second date with that chick?”

Mako lowered his tone to something grumpier, and Tanya chuffed with amusement before he finished. “That’s none of your business. Good night, hunny.”

They hung up at the same time. She handed away her phone.

The audience was so dispersed, now. Only stragglers remained chatting in high voices. 

Somebody laughed at a joke their friend told. 

Ronda was returning to the airship with the chieftain and their partner, in the midst of shaking hands and sharing farewells.

Tanya did the same with the chieftain, even saluted him with a casual flick of her wrist.

They had shelter and beds for the night, where they would be able to sleep.

Within ten minutes, Tanya was sacked out in one of their warm shelters. The moment she landed on her stomach on the bedding, she dropped unconscious. Her hands and feet dangled over the sides. Drool slipped out of her onto the pillow. She wore the same clothes as she had at dinner, but now they looked as disheveled as she felt.

Ronda came inside an hour later, to find her friend passed the fuck out. She covered Tanya with a wool blanket, left a note on the floor beside her, and before she poised on the threshold ready to leave, Tanya had clutched the blanket with a newborn girl’s need to be warmed.

They parted ways so Ronda could stay behind. She described her reasons in the note. 

Except this mortal mistake would live with both women for the months to come, once misfortune ripped Tanya out of her world, into a new future, when Air Raiders violated her airship.

Without Ronda anywhere nearby to save her.


	8. 8 - After the Airship

Her next several days passed in a flurry of lights, yelling, and surgery.

Fluorescent white flooded her eyes.

She tasted her own blood mixed with chemicals in the air and salt in the wind.

Leather and iron bound her face-up on a rigid platform. Edges of her bondage cut into her wrists, elbows, and brow in a fashion to exhibit her. They had her upright with her toes a few inches off the ground and her arms overhead. Her outfit hung in cottony tatters, sheer enough to display all her bruises and scrapes.

Somebody spoke nearby in a reedy voice, but what they said went in one ear and out the other.

Her own weakness zoned her out of the encounter, so it only lingered in her mind as a half-remembered nightmare.

The next one bludgeoned her, though. She collided with stone, where she crumpled flat on the ground. Slate pressed her cheek, her whole front, in fact, in the place she had fallen. She inhaled stale stone and dirt, while she slid her fingers over anything to grasp. However, she formed empty grips as frail as a newborn’s. Her legs failed her. 

Somehow, someone got her onto bedding. She drooled over a paper mat.

Voices fought each other back and forth. The argument centered on her. She recognized her name, but she had no wits to weigh in.

She faded from consciousness as the previous encounter drifted out of thought.

Her rest didn’t last long, because punctures in her spine lanced with the beginnings of a surgical operation. She clawed her bedding. Howls stripped out of her. Pain flayed her insides and summoned tears.

Howls became roars. 

Roars shook the air, earth, flesh, and bone. 

She fought to buck with wild abandon, but her spine was immobile and her legs merely flinched with the effort.

Pain made her naked as the operation plunged through her nerves. She never felt so bare. So exposed as how she felt then. Helpless. Prone. She was at mercy to the whims of her captors who wrought agony she never knew was possible. How they did it, she did not know, but at the time, she did not care.

She wanted to die, but they did not let her. They had their own designs about which she was the priority. She was their critical asset. They needed her.

So, she did not die. She would go on from that moment at their orders.

Thus, Tanya Sato’s adventure truly began, where the vices of drink and craft and pleasure would not save her this far from home.


	9. 9 - The Southern Air Temple, part 1

Tanya jerked when she awoke. She screwed up her face, when she breathed in her first waking gasp, because it tasted gritty. The sensation clogged her taste buds, but she couldn’t spit it out.

Red and orange sports obscured her vision.

Paper matting unstuck from the side of her face, where her own drool left a wet spot.

Pipes stuck up her nose. Something tickled behind her throat, making her on the verge of gagging. She ripped out the pipes and the tickling disappeared.

Weight pressed her down. It started at the back of her neck, followed between her scapulae, and ended at the base of her spine. Warm metal. Cords. A device was fixed to her so deep, it connected to her vertebrae and integrated her nerve endings. The operation put a device in her she couldn’t see, except by the stroke of her fingertips.

She kneaded it as if its texture gave away all the information she needed. She fingered its wires, made of copper, coiling ever downwards. Energy ran through them with the humming of an active machine. At the very lowest vertebra, they were bundled to form one thick thread connected to a car battery.

She recognized the logo on her energy source, because she designed them to power her company’s vehicles. She snatched the wires where they were attached to the battery’s positive and negative ends. She propped herself on her other elbow while the gravity of her scenario settled in.

She was plugged in. The surgery literally plugged her into an energy source. It turned her into a living engine that moved at its whim. It operated her. She moved because of it. She lived because of it. It owned her, in a manner of speaking, which made her little better than an Industry car.

The battery sat on a wooden table with criss-crossed legs, along with spare tools for a surgery, a bowl and spoon crusted with oatmeal, and a dirty rag. She shoved everything else off with a clattering noise to drag her battery closer, but a voice stunned her.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The woman sounded mechanical in her warning, layered with the caution of someone who had to express the same things over and over. Worn but wary.

Tanya caught their reflection in a cracked mirror. Though grit stubbled its outline, the visual was enough to identify with whom she was working.

They were spidery and pale, made of skin and bone and little else. They wore underwear which used to be cotton-white, a sign to how long they must have been here and the status in which they were kept. Cream covered their legs while they shaved with a penny-store plastic razor. What they had shaved so far gleamed ivory in the light of an oil lamp.

A couple other light sources emitted enough to see the rest of their surroundings. Of all the shabby furniture with benches cracked down the lengths, paper mats for bedding on the floor, and workbenches best suited for a T.V. dinner tray instead, what stood out the most was an iron door with knots the size of her fist.

It was seven meters tall and just as wide. A gap like a mail slot was made where people could slide it open and spy on her.

On them.

Tanya wore the same black underwear and pants as she had on her flight, where the raid snatched her out of mid-air. Her shirt was missing, though. Her jacket, too. And her drink.

Hunger and thirst came to her in an instant. Her hollow insides ached. Her throat was dry with parched earth. She clung to herself with both arms as she inched into a sitting position. The slate floor was shabby when she first put her toes down. She looked half of the woman she used to be. She hunched forward and starved and grimaced. Echoes of her surgery went through her arms and legs. Soreness and stiffness and shame.

The stranger finished shaving after a while, a process that smoothed their legs to appear almost polished. They wiped and washed themself clean, tugged a dark sleeveless tunic over their head for an outfit, and got a cup of lukewarm water for Tanya who drank it without protest.

She did not look them in the eyes when she asked in a ghost of her usual voice, “What did you do to me?”

They offered her a tunic of sand-colored cloth, which they helped to put in. The fabric scratched her skin, especially her armpits. 

“What I did? What I did is save your life.”

The tunic smelled like it hadn’t been washed since its last owner, and moreover like it had been worn for days and days over without changing.

“Your spinal cord was fractured. What I did was restore it. I brought back your mobility. You can walk, again.”

The door’s slot chinked when it opened.

“Say hi.” They waved politely at whomever was on the other side.

Their eyes were the only things visible but too dimly lit to discern any details.

“That’s right. They can look at us whenever they want.” They moved to a worktable where manilla folders sat in a pile. They sorted through them, until they found the one they wanted, and opened it to show Tanya its contents.

The slot closed, presumably because their guard had duties elsewhere.

The prisoners sat side by side with a diagram displayed. 

It was done in graphite on yellow paper. It showed Tanya’s spine, or at any rate, the previous condition of her spine. One vertebra had crunched to oblivion. The fiber that was supposed to connect it as a whole system was frayed because of the impact. It was an injury that paralyzed her. For the rest of her years, that damage would’ve put her in a wheelchair, pushed to every setting by whomever was kind enough to do so. Her brain would never be able to interact with the rest of her body even to her fingers and toes.

The notes scribbled here and there laid out Tanya’s condition in surgical detail.

It steeled her expression with a mixture of humiliation and self-loathing. She covered her mouth behind her hand and squeezed what little life she had left. She had nothing left to give except thanks for her head and her heart. Her still-beating muscle was anxious to keep going. But in her circumstances, it didn’t feel worth it. Her grip shook with weakness, even after she clutched the edge of her bedding.

“What’s your name?” she asked them, who returned the folder with their back turned to her.

“My name is Yeng-jue. No need to ask you yours.”

“Thanks.”

Yeng-jue gulped when she folded on the foot of Tanya’s bedding. They curled their legs like a nest beneath them where they wrung their hands together. They fidgeted while they talked: roaming their fingers between each other, studying their nails, picking at the wrinkled linen. Nerves made them uncertain. Perhaps as wary as they had always been. “We met once, at a conference in Ba Sing Se. It must have been five or six years ago. You wore a New Solstice hat that looked so dorky over your eyes.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You wouldn’t. If I had been that drunk, I wouldn’t have been able to stand, much less lead a panel about neural integrated prosthetics. Somehow, you steered the discussion onto the benefits of robotics in bondage and sexual discipline.”

A crowd of muffled voices cut them off midway.

The door’s slot opened. Somebody from the crowd barked for their attention.

“Stand up.” They jumped to their feet.

Tanya was slower going, because her legs wanted to give out when she tested her weight.

Yeng-jue sweated. “Stand up!” They aided Tanya with their own weight, that way they leaned on each other the same way a crone leans on their next generation.

Tanya’s tail of wires tugged between her and the car battery, so she clutched it to her free side.

A deadbolt unlatched with a metallic thud. A few beeps of a keypad later, another lock was undone, before the prison door swung towards them. Its hinges groaned with mass in a noise that filled the chamber.


End file.
